The Hari Nagar Assembly constituency in the heart of west Delhi is a mixed bag. There are areas dotted with unplanned houses, bustling shops, cars parked anywhere and everywhere, garbage at every possible corner and congested roads. Then there are spic and span DDA flats and posh bungalows in the
constituency, which also houses the Tihar jail.

In the Hari Nagar locality, amid the rush of the day in the unplanned dwellings and vast market areas, the congestion is evident.

Jayant Verma, a resident of the locality, said the problem of parking was plaguing everyone in the area. “A lack of space along with illegal parking compounds the problem. Any time of the day, getting space to park your vehicle is a futile exercise. As a result, you will find cars parked on the roads resulting in congestion because of this encroachment,” Verma said.

According to his neighbour, Maneet Singh, flooding is also an issue in the area. “Every time it rains, the whole area drowns. Complaints to the municipal corporation have yielded no results. We know it like a fact that it will get flooded if it rains,” Singh said.

In the nearby Beriwala Bagh, all problems of the city are present. Power poles and wires run dangerously amid the narrow lanes, which are results of haphazard and unauthorised constructions of the area. The sanitation level is poor and even though it all looks like the ripple effects of population explosion, apathy by authorities is evident.

“The drinking water is not clean and even stinks at times. Electricity poles and wires run amok quite dangerously at all corners. Garbage is littered all around and no one from the agencies concerned do a thing,” Keshar Singh Ramola, a resident, said.

Ramola said the rising prices are killing the common man. “Be it the ascending prices of things in general or electricity, these are hitting us hard. People in power should think about how people will survive in these expensive times,” he said.

In another corner of the constituency at Janakpuri, things are a bit different. Big bungalows dot the area and things look fine at first glance.

Nidhi Kalra, a housewife, said fights over parking space are a daily bane for the people of the area. “There is no space and every family has more than one car. Where do you park them? And there starts the problem. It even gets difficult to get out of the lanes because of haphazardly parked vehicles,” Kalra said.

Sewerage, she said, is another problem which needs to be addressed. “All the gutters are blocked. After rains, there is flooding. Immediate steps are required,” she said.